Have you ever handled more than a single task at a time? If yes, then you can easily identify with Harpreet Bhagrath with whom things get so higgledy-piggledy while multi-tasking he ends up turning the world around him topsy-turvy.
There is a reason why, in my household

, nobody asks me to boil the milk anymore. They are pretty fearful that if they ask me to boil the milk, I would boil it over.
My problem is that I am one of those people who are always forgetting things with their mind going haywire the moment they have to handle more than a single task. And I introduced the milk motif to launch the talk on my multi-tasking skills. When I am done recounting the rest of my escapades, the milk motif will pale in comparison.
First incident that established my reputation, around my household, as an exceptionally gifted person at messing up things took place when I was still in school. On the fateful day that this unpleasant incident took place, just to fill you in on the chain of events leading to the big blunder, my mom had come from the market place with precious set of bone china wares. As she got busy with my sister, who had just cut her finger slightly while cutting the vegetables, she told me to put the cutlery on the dining table.
This was a simple task; simple enough for a 5-year-old to do without getting confused. All I was required to do was go to the next room and place the wares on the table. Instead, what I did was… I threw the damn cutlery in the dustbin. Ain’t it nuts, for crying out loud! To be able to do a nutty thing like that, throwing the costly cutlery in the dustbin, you have to have a screw loose in your head somewhere.
It so transpired that while on my way to the dining room, I was instructed by my sister, who had just finished cutting the vegetables (and her finger), to pick the white polythene bag containing vegetable waste and throw it in the kitchen dustbin. And I’ll be damned if the cutlery bag was also not of white color. Clever ones from among you should be able to tell by now what might have caused me to treat the cutlery so badly. The rest of you, beg your pardon for being so direct and rude, are lacking it somewhat.
Let me enlighten you on the reason. The bags being the same color, I got confused in which contained what, and hence the goof-up. What happened to the waste bag? I can hear you asking. I give you two guesses… Yes! I placed it carefully on the dining table. You have got to be careful with china bone, right?
My folks say that I am a man with mechanical movements. I go on about executing the tasks in a robotesque manner. The task will be completed no doubt but don’t expect me to use my brain. But what really gets my proverbial goat is the fact that whenever anything goes wrong it’s always due to the machinations of some demonic higher power (I’m a non-believer by the way, except when these sort of goof-ups are happening) that needs some spanking. If only my sister had not interrupted my progress towards the dining table... and if she had to interrupt, if only the sodding carry bags had been of different colors...
At exactly the time crockery hit the bottom of the dustbin, it gave the most irritating and frightening sound (Tnnnkkk!!) and I instantly knew that I made some miscalculation in executing the twin-tasks. I must say I never got so afraid in my entire life span of 23 years and 120 months. To think that both the parties were in perfect kind of mood, mother exhausted and sister wounded, to let loose their furies ran shivers down my spine. Come to think of it, I had no spine left after the full import of the goof-up dawned on me. I thought I was going to collapse.
You should’ve seen my face that turned the color of the carry bags themselves. If you were a photographer and present there, you would’ve done well to capture my frightened face in your camera. Just to make the picture more vivid, what happens when you blow a horn, the one that trains in India have on them, behind a diabetic chap who, in the dead of the night, is trying to fetch some sweets from the kitchen surreptitiously? If you are a photographer, you get the shot of your life, the kind that wins awards.
I shouldn’t be telling you what happened to me next ‘cause in that case the article will assume tragic nature rather than comical. But suffice it to say that the sad end of the cutlery made ma mater’s blood boil and sis was sullen for days over garbage on dining desk.
Another incident, accident I should rather say, that is a recent occurrence may well make you question my intellect. I was drinking milk and reading a PG Wodehouse novel. The doorbell rang. An acquaintance of my father’s had come to wish Happy Diwali with a box of sweets. Accepting wishes from him along with the sweets, I made for the kitchen to pigeonhole the sweets for the moment. As I reached kitchen door, I felt like spitting. Well, not to worry; I could spit in the sink and still manage to deposit the sweets box on the shelf.
So, everything was OK till now with two simple tasks and two things in both my hands – milk and sweets-box. But as I approached the kitchen door, I’ll be damned if the If the bloody phone didn’t let out a tinkle.
Now I had three tasks at hand - answer the phone, place the sweets on the kitchen shelf, and spit in the sink and I was having two things in my hands – sweets-box and glass of milk. Me being me, I got confused while multi-tasking and by the time I reached the sink my mind went haywire and started functioning dysfunctional. I had now only a vague idea about how I was to execute these three tasks.
Throwing, spitting, answering, pigeonholing, sink, spit, ringing phone, sweets-box - all got jumbled in my chaotic mind and I ended up making three mistakes. I knew I was to throw something in the sink, so there went the sweets box. I had to clear my mouth of saliva so there it went in the milk. As to the phone, it kept on ringing till… I don’t know till when ‘cause I was so shocked by what I had done to my milk and the sweets.
That’s all folks! If I were to only list all my experiences or fits of forgetfulness, much less detail them, it would make a book this thick. So, for the moment it’s toodle-oo from me.